1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control method for continuously printing a plurality of jobs without being interrupted by printing from another job.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a plurality of jobs is printed with a shared printer, group printing can reduce or prevent another user's job from slipping into the plurality of jobs, which causes a mix-up of printouts leading to the burdensome sorting of such printouts.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-192804 discusses setting, to the print job which is to be group-printed, a unique group identifier, a number of jobs in the group, and a value indicating an order of a job within the group. The printer stores the print data inside the printer until all the jobs in the group are received and then collectively prints the jobs to prevent mixing of jobs other than those in the group. Further, the printer prints in the order designated in the group even when the order of receiving the jobs has changed.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-149159 discusses a technique in which, when the same user issues a print request within a set period of time, a print job requested by a different user is suspended.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-202723 discusses once accumulating a plurality of print jobs in a print server and performing pull printing by the user holding a card in front of the printer. As a result, the jobs can be collectively printed with an arbitrary printer even if the user does not designate a print output destination. Further, priority is given to the processing of a plurality of jobs during pull printing to prevent mixing with other jobs.
In the above-described conventional techniques, it may be necessary on the printer side to identify the group identifier and user information added to the job and to perform a special process such as restricting job interruption based on the identified information. Further, the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-202723 requires a print server, a card reader, and a card authentication system, so that it becomes expensive to introduce such a system.
In contrast to the above-described techniques, there is a technique which combines a plurality of jobs into one job on the host side. As a result, a plurality of jobs can be continuously printed without interruption even if the printer does not include a special function. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-134394 discusses once storing print jobs as intermediate files in the host side and combining a plurality of jobs. The combining of the jobs can prevent another unexpected job from mixing into the plurality of jobs.
The techniques discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-134394 thus does not require special control to be performed on the printer side to continuously print a plurality of jobs desired by the user without being interrupted by another job. Such a technique is useful for the user.
However, there is a print attribute in which only one setting value can be specified to one print job due to a limitation of the conventional printing system. Therefore, the setting value of the print attribute in each job may be changed when the jobs are combined using the above-described technique.